Lebanon student shows off invention on national TV show

Seven-year-old Owen Zimnoch has had his fair share of excitement and disappointment recently. Owen’s invention, The Beam Bouncer, wowed the judges in May at the state-wide Invention Convention and impressed comedian and talk show host Steve Harvey so much he had Owen on the show. The only problem — the show air...

Seven-year-old Owen Zimnoch has had his fair share of excitement and disappointment recently.

Owen’s invention, The Beam Bouncer, wowed the judges in May at the state-wide Invention Convention and impressed comedian and talk show host Steve Harvey so much he had Owen on the show. The only problem — the show aired at 3 p.m. Oct. 29, the day Hurricane Sandy hit Connecticut.

“I was disappointed,” Owen said. “The storm was on the TV.”

Owen managed to see the show at 9 a.m. in Rhode Island, but in Connecticut the afternoon show was canceled by storm coverage.

Owen’s science teacher, Carolyn Wheeler, said she and the school are desperately trying to get a copy of the segment to show in school. Owen’s mother, Bethany Zimnoch, said she also has contacted “The Steve Harvey Show” to get a recording.

As for Owen, watching himself on TV was as exciting as taping the show.

“I was nervous,” Owen said of taping the show in early October and seeing it on TV. “But, the green room is not actually green. It’s white.”

The Beam Bouncer is a solar-powered box that saves Owen about 20 minutes every winter morning. The invention keeps the water for Owen’s pet rabbit thawed and can even heat it to 120 degrees on a sunny day.

Owen first impressed Wheeler and many others at Lebanon Elementary School’s April Invention Convention. Owen’s Beam Bouncer was selected to go to the state-wide competition where he won one of six CL&P Energy Awards. A first-grader at the time, Owen was the youngest winner. He also won a blue ribbon for distinguished inventors.

Wheeler was not surprised Owen did so well at the convention.

“This was no small feat for a 6-year-old,” she said. “Owen is an excellent example of the kind of self-directed, critical thinking that our young students are doing. They identify relevant problems and generate novel solutions for them. It is exciting to speculate where their curiosity will lead them and how they will impact the world for the rest of us.”

The recognition somehow caught the attention of the staff for a planned Queen Latifah talk show, Owen’s mother said. The family was first contacted in June for a possible appearance. They even made a video of Owen and the invention at the show’s request, but the show and the taping never got off the ground, Zimnoch said.

In early October, however, the family got a call from the Steve Harvey show, already a nationally syndicated talk show.

“I was packing my bags for the Queen Latifah show and it never happened,” Zimnoch said. “So, I took this one less seriously.”

On the Friday of Columbus Day weekend the family was off to a New Hampshire vacation when the call came in that Owen needed to be on a plane Monday to Chicago for a taping of the show.

Page 2 of 2 - Owen and his mother boarded the Chicago bound plane that Monday at 5 p.m. They were at the NBC studios in Chicago at 2:30 Tuesday for the 6:30 taping and then on a late night flight back home that same day.

Owen made a point of telling everyone he met about the show.

The flight attendant on the flight home even announced Owen as a celebrity over the plane’s PA system to a round of applause.

“It was an amazing experience for him and for me,” she said.

Harvey even gave Owen a number of educational toys and a gift card to buy $250 more of them.

“I’m waiting to figure out what I really want before I use it,” he said.

Owen is not done with the Beam Bouncer or inventing. He loves to build things and almost didn’t enter the Invention Convention last year. This year he’s already thinking of ideas.

Owen is also determined to get a patent on the Beam Bouncer.

“I think other people would be interested in it,” he said. “It’s really helped me, it could help someone else.”